other · 406 · Barcelona
Vigilantius was a Gallic presbyter from Calagurris who had been Paulinus of Nola's messenger and Jerome's guest at Bethlehem before he fell out with both. About 406 he wrote against the practices the western church was then adopting: venerating the relics of martyrs, which he called worshipping ashes; the night vigils at the tombs, which he said produced the disorders anyone could predict; the lighting of candles by daylight; praying to the saints; sending alms to Jerusalem instead of feeding the poor at home; and the preference of celibacy, which he thought was emptying the clergy of decent men. Jerome answered with Contra Vigilantium and says himself he dictated it in a single night, which reads. Almost nothing of Vigilantius survives except through that reply, so the position has to be reconstructed from a hostile summary — the same problem as Praxeas at seed 221. He is here because the argument he lost is one of the few in this dataset that was reopened, on nearly the same terms, and lost again by the other side.
What did the objections to relics sound like at the time?
Very like the objections made eleven centuries later, and they were answered in one night.